The average employee will spend approximately 90,000 hours of your life working, hopefully these 90,000 hours will be spent doing something you love or at least enjoy.
Work for the vast majority of people through-out the UK and Ireland is some thing of a necessity, but fortunately the time we live in gives us ample opportunity to control our occupational path.
Clean up your CV!
You may not have looked at your CV for 10 years or you may not feel the need to edit your CV. You need to start by reading through your CV, reading phrases and words that you often used may have sounded great when the CV was written but now they may sound week. The below list has some cliches and phrases that you may have used that may not sound as good as they used to and some alternatives:
Team player. As its unlikely anyone would claim the opposite of this statements like this become meaning-less.
- This can be replaced by using example of when you worked as a team to achieve a collective goal.
Project Management skills. This is a round about way of saying that you have organisation skills.
- Have you managed a budget? Managed a project? if you have done both of these or one then list these instead of Project management skills.
Results orientated. Again it is unlikely that anyone would say the opposite so using this cliche is not such a good idea.
- A potential employee should show the employer that they have the skills to get the results and solve the employers problems. Did you increase sales? Did you save money for your old employer? Did you achieve you targets in the face of difficult circumstances?. These are the questions you should ask yourself.
People management skills. This can imply different things, does this mean you were in a management position or does it simply mean you got on well with your colleagues?
- This can be replaced by using example of when you lead colleagues or showed junior staff how to undertake a task. Did you rescue a failing project? Did you implement new safety standards?
Key skills and experience
Your CV should demonstrate all the skills you have gained through-out your professional and academic career, hopefully you will be able to link your skills to your workplace experience. If this is not possible then try to demonstrate the use of these skills outside the workplace.
Most key skills fall into one of three categories:
- Transferable skills. These are skills which have been acquired in one setting in or out of work that can be transferred to different sorts of construction.
- Job-related skills. These are skills that are specific to a certain position that may require you to have, these can then be used in your new position.
- Adaptive skills. These sorts of aptitudes are sometimes less obvious and harder to quantify because they rely on personality traits rather than learning.
Your experience should be listed in this section, listing experience and what roles and responsibilities is probably the most important part of your CV.
Your experience should be laid out in the most easy to read format, dates of employment and what companies you worked for should be made larger than the responsibilities and roles as seeing a company you have worked for will help the employer see what you have achieved.
Make you CV more effective
Whether you have two or twenty years experience the same rules apply Show what you have done or what potential you have .
When talking about your experience try to pick at least one specific example for each explaining how your involvement improved the business. You must remember that your CV is designed to get you the interview and not the job, using too much detail on your CV can lead to it becoming boring to read and potential employers may not have the time to read all the details. The completed projects and skills you have gained are used to entice the potential employer, once you get to the interview stage you can go into further detail.
It is also important to remove achievements that you have gained that may not be relevant, this will help to free up space for more important things.
Formatting
A CV that looks good, has been formatted and layed out well is much more likely to be read in full. Having a good looking and well formatted CV will make the potential employer believe you are a worthwhile investment.
Once you have completed writing the body of you CV, it is now time to look at the ways in which it is presented, consider the following:
- The layout.
Try making your CV no longer than 2/3 A4 pages, this is generally a good idea because once employers see the first two pages of a CV they will stop reading here. This means you need to shorten sentences or remove non- relevant information on the first two pages.
- The typeface
Conventional typefaces are the best ones to go for when writing a CV. The simplest and oldest is the best to use New Times Roman. However of you want to make your CV stand out a little more other typefaces can be used such as Mistral, Calibri or Arial.
- The font size
Your name, your current & past & employers & dates of employment should be largest text throughout you CV this will help the employer or recruiter see if you have good longevity and if you have worked for large top 10 contractors. The main body of the CV should be no smaller than font size 11, this will also make your CV easier to read.
- The most suitable CV format
A good CV will begin with listing your personnel details and will then progress onto an opening statement. Following this it always a good idea to use short bullet points listing companies you have worked for including dates, this will further entice employers to read further. If this is not for you then listing your experience in more detail in reverse chronological order usually makes sense.
After giving a short paragraph about yourself and listing your experience in full your academic career should then be listed. This section should include professional qualifications & schools/ universities / colleges and what dates you attended.
- Conclusion
A good way to conclude your CV is to let the employer know who you are as a person this will help the employer connect with you and will include things such as your interests and hobbies. This section should not be exhaustive, bullet points will be enough.
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